The Twins

                                              The Twins

“Then she woke us from a sound sleep, made us get out of a garbage covered bed and clean up the mess she caused by dumping the whole pail of garbage on us, and when we finished cleaning it up, we had to get back into a smelly bed, without sheets or blanket, and try to go back to sleep. It was not easy going to school the next day. I could not keep my eyes open because of my midnight wake-up, right Judy? We never told anyone what was going on. We were afraid of what the crazy bitch would do to us next."
                                     
As I walked into my mother's kitchen, I could hear them talking.

“Guys, are you talking about your time in the Foster Home?”

“We are Ronnie, we told you about the time Nana dumped a pail of garbage on us because we forgot to empty it earlier that night?”

“I do. You know, there is so much I still do not know about those years we were apart.  I can not begin to imagine what you had to have gone through."

" We don't have to think too hard to remember , Ronnie.  Those memories will be with us forever. That was a time in my and Judy's life that  I would not wish on my worse enemy.”

Till now, I had been a little reluctant to bring up that part of their lives, not being sure how they would react. We were only back together for a short time, having been apart for twenty two years, I did not know my sisters well enough to know what I could and could not discuss about the past without overstepping my privilege to information as their sister.  I believed it could only bring us closer,  we talked about those years. I was writing a book of short stories and wanted to feature a story about them and their struggle growing up in a foster home without their family.  More important, I needed answers for that time and those years we were apart. I needed to make sense of it in my own mind.

My sisters, Janice Marie and Judith Ann, were beautiful twin baby girls born into our family.  Janice was a little curly haired blond with big brown eyes and Judy had shinny stright brown hair  and she too had big brown eyes. I was six years old when they were born and I became attached to them immediately upon meeting them.

Our family was not an average family of the fifties.  It bordered on the poverty line, giving all of us fodder for a best seller.  Their early years were a package of sadness, without each other, they could never have survived the opening.

They were born in 1949 in a suburb of New York called Mount Vernon.  Their family from the start was a mother, father, a six-year-old sister and a four-year-old brother.  When the twins came home from the hospital they came to a one-bedroom apartment that was shared by the six of us. We all lived together for the first two years of their lives not only poor but with great parental upheaval

Pouring a glass of wine for each of us, I turned to my sister and asked her a question that had been on my mind for so long.

" Do you have any memory of the early years, when we all lived together Judy?"

"Not really.  I have a vague recollection of having a brother and sister but not a true memory."  It’s like a dream that I just can not bring into focus.”

Our father was abusive to our mother, and by the time the twins were two and a half years old the marriage was over and the four of us were placed in Foster Care.  At the onset, the four of us lived in that foster home together for three months.  By the fourth month my brother and I were brought home to live with our mother, leaving our little sisters behind.  Mother’s explanation was. with all the legal fees needed to bring us home there was no money left for the twins.

They remained in that home for another year. At the end of that year, they were transferred to a permanent foster home.  It was Mother's stated intention to come back for them as soon as she could get the expense needed. The twins never had the opportunity to know any of this because when she left they were two and a half years old.  So, this resulted in them thinking of themselves as orphans during those early years of their lives.

" Do either of you remember the first Foster Home?"

" Janice and I were so young it is really hard to know for sure if we remember anything that far back.  But, I do remember sharing a big bedroom with other kids when I was very young."

"Do you remember me or Jim?" 

" I am not totally sure.  Sometimes I have fragments of memories that I can not identify."

Upon going to their permanent foster home, they acquired new  foster parents. The new guardians were in there sixties and unqualified to be in the system. At the age of three when Janice and Judy came to live these people who were too old and  mentally declining.  It was apparent from the start that they were merely in the business of foster parenting for the money. Unfortunately the girls were too young to no any better and when they were old enough to do something about it, they had become conditioned to accepting the treatment they were getting and were fearful of telling anybody what they were living with.

"How long did you live in the second home Jan?"

"From the time we were three years old till the age of seventeen when they finally passed away.  They died from some sickness.  One from heart failure, and the other I am not sure of."

These two people were incapable of showing any type of love or understanding of what my sisters needed.  Their place in that home was a nightmare of insensitivity,

" Judy, remember how we used to say, we felt like we were the two smallest puppies in a litter and none wanted us.  Thank God we had each other.  I was always so lonely I do not know what I would have done if I did not have Judy."

Listening to them tell the story I felt myself choke up with emotions.  Anger, sadness, pity, and I was filled with questions of why it had to be.  While we were sharing I could tell how difficult it was for Janice  and Judy to talk about it. Tears were brushed away so often.

“Are you sure you want to go on?"

“No, really it’s OK just sometimes it hurts.”

Nana, the name she chose to be called, made the girls her little maids, and that was exactly what she called them, her little maids.

"That made us feel great, right Jude?  I was her maid.  I can not tell you how I hated that title.  It was a  feeling of isolation and indifference."

"We had regular jobs around her house and God help us if we forgot to do something. Like her dumping the garbage on us in the middle of the night after shaking us out of a sound sleep.”

" And how about the other time Nana woke us in the middle of the night.  She shook us until we were fully awake and told us it was Easter Sunday, and it wasn't.  She made us get up and dressed to go to church. There we were walking the streets at 2:00AM in the dark to the Church, which was dark, and the doors were locked.  It was a feeling of pure terror."  I was never so scared in my life.  When we got home she never said a word she just told us to get to bed."

Janice and Judy had some members of their family that they  were allowed to visit occasionally. Their grandmother, and their aunt Ann but neither of them was able to take them to their homes on a permanent basis.  Neither of them had the room for two little girls. Also, their father would not allow anyone who might be interested in adopting them to have that option.  At one point their Uncle Lou, one of their father's brothers offered them his home but their father would not give his consent.  The reason behind his choice was never understood. Maybe it was pride or it could have been that he always held out for repairing his family one-day, but that would have been a stretch of his imagination.

Their father was unable to keep a job.  He never lasted more than a month.  He lived in squalor and filth probably associated with the fact that he had borderline mental problems that were never addressed.

"How often did you see your father?"

"Hardly ever, right Jan?"

"He would promise to come by on a Saturday and never show up. There we were two dogs sitting on the stoop waiting all day long.  That was the worst feeling. We just knew none wanted us.  Then on the off day when he did decide to bless us with his presence, he came with a little brown bag of penny candy and he was gone within an hour. I remember it like it was yesterday, feeling so alone and unloved.  Those feelings never let go." We learned very young that we could not depend on him or anyone else for that matter."

Janice and Judy lived under intolerable conditions for those years between three and seventeen. Their room was the smallest bedroom in a three-bedroom apartment of a forty apartment building that was infested with cockroaches.  Their room was small and cell like having one single bed that both girls slept on, one at the head and one at the foot of the bed for the entire time they lived there. There were seldom sheets on the bed.  When state welfare came to visit and  saw there were no sheets they ordered a set for them.  After they left,  within a couple of days the sheets were delivered.  Then within a few days the sheets would mysteriously disappear.  The thought is that Nana probably gave them away to her own adult family who lived elsewhere

In the summer they went to the country where the foster-parents had a home with a little shed type house in the rear.  The twins called the home the big house.  They were never allowed in the big house.  Their living area was the small shed behind a garage with no heat, no water, and no toilet.  There was an old outhouse off to the side.  The girls were allowed to use it when necessary. Most of the time in the evening they were fearful of using that outhouse. The night sounds and the darkness were terrifying to these young girls. So much so ,that they did their business in a coffee cup and emptied  it in the morning.

"How did you clean yourselves?"

"Every day Nana would bring us a bucket of warm water to wash  ourselves and when we were finished we kept the water, so that we could use it during the day. Our meals were horrible.  Nana would make a big pot of spaghetti at the start of the week and we would eat that same thing every day till the pot was empty.

"Did she eat the same thing with you?"

"No way.  She brought the food out to us and we ate it on a big rock that had a flat surface behind the shed. She went back in the house and who knows what she ate.  Talk about being isolated.  I think dogs get treated better than we were treated."

Did she at least let you come in to the big house at night to watch TV?”

"No.  Judy, remember how we used to sit on the steps to the big house and look at TV through the screen door?”

“ How the hell could I forget.  I hope she is rotting in hell.”

"Did you visit with Grandmother often?"

"As often as the state allowed.  I guess every few weeks.  And when we went there she would send us home with food and new underwear.  We would get to see our cousins and aunts and uncles.  That was the only good time we had.  It was the only time I felt like a normal kid who mattered."

"Me too Jan.  Then when we got home we had to hide the food Gram gave us under the bed or Nana confiscated it.  The new clothes disappeared the next day and we saw them on her grandchildren a couple of days later.  Not only that, but they would be playing with our toys that Grandmother gave us as though they were their own."

Nothing belonged to these girls. They had no childhood treasures or favorite dresses or best dolls.  Even the shoes on their feet were taped and patched.  Theirs' was a life of misery as foster children.  They were the only ones they could depend on for their care and protection. As a result a bond was forged between the twins that became their only touch with the reality of love

."Jan, tell her about the time that crazy lady tried to drowned me.”

"We used to have a big hole in the ground behind our building.  After one of our rainstorms the hole was full of water.    We were all splashing and playing in the hole when this crazy lady who lived in our building decided to hold Judy's head under water.  Thank God the Super came out in time to grab Judy away from her.  He carried her home crying.  When Nana answered the door, she was a screaming lunatic because Judy got her school shoes wet.  Yea, and they were being held together with tape and string. Right?  She slapped Judy and never even offered a word of comfort."

"Judy, tell Ronnie what she did to us when we misbehaved."

"There was a lock and chain on the outside of our bedroom door and whenever we got in trouble she locked us in our room for hours and hours.  But we got smart.  We found a way to put the bed against the door then we climbed out the window to freedom in the back alley.  We always came back though.  I guess we were so afraid of what masochist thing Nana would do to us if we didn’t come home and she found us."

"How did they finally die Judy?

"You will not believe this one. Papa was on the couch dead for two days and Nana did not even know it.  He had suffered a heart attach.  She told us to keep very quiet because he was sleeping. I remember calling their daughter to tell her that something was wrong with Papa he is not movng. Her daughter came later that day to find her father dead on the couch and his body was decomposing.  He had a fatal heart attack.  That was when we were eight years old.  Nana died seven years later.  I am not sure what the cause of death was but surely it could not have been her heart because she truly did not have one as far as we were concerned."

" What did you guys do after she passed away?"

" Judy and I were terrified.  The landlord of the house we lived in told us we could stay there as long as we came up with the rent every month.  We were so frightened not knowing what the future held and if we could do it but we did get part time jobs because we still had a year of high school to go.  We got jobs at a little luncheonette across the street and every day at 5:00AM went there to set up for the day and had to be finished in time to get to school.  Then back to the job when the school day was over.  Working there proved to be a bit of a blessing because we could bring home food that was left over so our food expense was kept to a minimum.

" What a life that was.  We grew up way before our time."

The girls made it through high school and into and through adulthood trying not to  look back too often.  When I finally I found the courage to contact them without my parents knowledge, they were twenty two yeas old.    This was the start of the family morphing back together.  Their reunion with their mother was not without a long arduous period of questions and answers that were not readily accepted.  It still remains a work in progress.  Going back is never easy.

Janice married and had two beautiful daughters who eventually gave her four wonderful grandsons. Judith married and had a son and daughter who were the center of her universe.  These women matured into wonderful people who loved their families and with a wealth of gratitude shared themselves with their loved ones.  They embraced their brother and sisters who they never really knew until adulthood with a genuine love and an undying commitment for the rest of their lives.

Janice Marie and Judith Ann are two beautiful women who were born into a family of poverty and dysfunction.  They somehow weathered all that was placed at their feet.  With grace and gratitude they move forward every day.  Some days easier than others.  They will never forget those hellish years in foster care.  They both have to live with the fallout of the emotional damage it caused.  In spite of it all they try to leave the anger and loneliness behind.  Considering what they came through makes them extraordinary women especially to me.

I often wish I could have been able to reach them sooner.  As we finished up our afternoon of looking back, teary eyes and three empty wine glasses, we were all drained from walking the halls of the past.  There was nothing that could have been said to make the sadness go away that I felt to my core, but I have them now and till I am gone I will be forever grateful that we are together again.  Only they know what they lived through, until now.